Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

........which teacher would you go back and apologise to?

I think mine would have to be Andrew Gunning - my housemaster in Lamb A for constantly getting into trouble and him having to deal with it.

Actually, thinking about it, I would probably go back and apologise to most for being fairly horrible through my school days!!

Quite a few, I would imagine, especially from when I was 15 or 16.

That was when I took very few things seriously, apart from music. I must have been pretty hard work then (as were quite a few of us, I suspect).

Like countless thousands of ex-pupils, I'd have to apologise to Mr Matthews of chemistry fame. Not that I mucked about much, compared with the other grinning apes in the classroom. But I did once get him in the ear'ole with a paper-pellet while he was writing on the blackboard.

It wasn't funny, it wasn't clever and it wasn't grown-up.

But mainly, it's the staff and former monitors who should be apologising to ME. Call me unforgiving, but the fact that Mr Shore/Shaw (LHA house tutor) once gave me a detention when I'd done nothing wrong still rankles (as does the fact that I meekly did the detention.) Masters with severely defective vision should NOT have access to detention slips.

And spiteful, emotionally-immature teenagers should not be given the power to punish their fellows purely because they don't happen to like them.

most of my housemasters and certain other of the less strict teachers. David Bussey comes to mind as does Rex Roberts.

Mr Bentley for flicking ink on his shirt.
Miss Hann for genrerally being a nuisance.
Miss Robinson (not teacher but deputy house mistress) for a drink related episode

absolutely no-one...
mr matthews already had ink down the back of his jacket
louis bardou didnt mind me having a fag
bob sillett didnt seem to mind when I lit the ether in the test tubes
i reckon that teachers choose to be teachers for the challenge,...
all we did was to try our best to provide them with an opportunity to face those challenges and deal with them.
actually - I did annoy Des Carrington once and I might apologise to him...
there's probably a few pupils who if I had my time again - I might apologise for things - but teachers - they can take care of themselves.

Rory wrote:actually - I did annoy Des Carrington once and I might apologise to him...
there's probably a few pupils who if I had my time again - I might apologise for things - but teachers - they can take care of themselves.

What did you do to the track

I agree with you about pupils probably worth a thread on it's own though

Actually it wasn't the track - he was in a hurry to get somewhere (for personal reasons) and I think I might have crossed in front of his car very very slowly - he was that angry I realised immediately that sometimes I shouldn't be such an arse.....I if had been him I probably would have run me over. Its funny how one never forgets the smallest things........

Mine would have to be

a) The Holdsworths for being a total pain in the A***
b) Mr Williams for making him put up with all my moaning
c) Mr Ward - as i never really took him seriously and made his life a misery

Sorry, one more to add to the list

Mr Chandler for my part in giving him the most hellish week in our French exchange and for throwing a snow ball at him in French class.

There are far too many whom I have caused grey hairs and baldness - And that is the just the female members of the common room.

Rather than apologise, I would rather just thank them for their patience and also sometimes their inpatience. I can't say that I am wholly successful and happy person now. But I know it would be far worse had they not tolerated and suppressed my wild side.

Fertii wrote:........which teacher would you go back and apologise to?

I think mine would have to be Andrew Gunning - my housemaster in Lamb A for constantly getting into trouble and him having to deal with it.

Gunning was a housemaster????? I remember some fairly hilarious Geography lessons.....

Yes, Andrew Gunning was a nice bloke. We actually made him cry one lesson - I think it was on the UF. All we were doing was chatting amongst ourselves at the beginning of the lesson and not paying attention, kinda waiting for him to tell us to shut up and listen (like most teachers did).

He must have had something bad going on in his life at the time as out of nowhere he erupted, kicked us out and told us all to come back for a class detention in between the last morning lesson and lunch. Needless to say, everyone was really shocked and gutted that we had upset him.

When we came back for our detention we all voiced our apologies to him and he was alright about it. Next lesson, it was forgotten.

Made me realise that in amongst the monsters, bullies, eccentrics and clowns, some teachers were human beings as well.

I owe Ruthven an apology for sacking him; I was his fag (or whatever we called slaves at the time). OTOH who else would leave Housie and fulfil his life's ambition by becoming station master at Cardiff?

I'm still waiting for one from Emberson (now a lecturer - ? lecherer? - or professor at a university in the antipodes) for putting me in the sicker. I suppose that is how he deals with his students; should I warn his university?

Then we have the case of the little Bear (I didn't have any problem with big Bear) who forgot half the facts in his report to Kit and thus got me six with the cane (or slipper - I got so many sessions I forget which was which).

Next was a certain Mr Jones, housemaster of Prep A. One of the problems of coming from the South Hams was that we didn't speak English loike ey' doz up east loike (we could talk freely with the Breton fishermen though). I got there not understanding what on earth people were talking about and one night saw these moving lights in the sky which for a nine year old was pretty scary so I got reported. Mr Jones used to come to our town for holidays so he understood the language problem but started spouting a load of twaddle and when I didn't understand he was far from pleased - to put it mildly.
(If that sounds bad, a man I know arrived as a boy at a certain famous public school - a 4 letter word starting with E - from France not speaking English; they set fire to him and in his 70's his back was still a mass of scar tissue.)

Those aside, I was me and I remain me. Like it or lump it; you get what you see and what you hear.

sejintenej wrote:I. One of the problems of coming from the South Hams was that we didn't speak English loike ey' doz up east loike .

I taught in Ivybridge for several years and I still remember being asked in a German lesson how to say "to" in German - naturally I asked in what context - the reply came "What`s the time to?" !!!! Ranking equally with "where are we to?" ,roughly translated as "what page are we on?"
Never heard it anywhere before or since!